Everywhere With You
by analine
Summary: Navigating the path home. Post-series/reunion fic.


**Title:** Everywhere With You  
**Fandom:** No.6  
**Pairing/Characters:** Nezumi/Shion  
**Warnings/Spoilers:** post-series, non-explicit sex  
**Rating:** M/R (to be safe)  
**Word Count:** ~2,400  
**Beta:** Sariagray  
**Summary: **Navigating the path home. Post-series/reunion fic.

**Notes: **Fifty themes, fifty sentences. Written for the 1sentence community on LJ.

* * *

_Moats & boats & waterfalls,  
alley ways & pay phone calls  
I've been everywhere with you_

(Home is wherever I'm with you.)

-_Home_, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes

**Everywhere With You**

**Motion**

Nezumi moves fast because he has to, because moving means he's still alive, still here, even if he hasn't known where "here" is for miles and miles.

**Cool**

The nights are pleasant enough where he ends up (the temperature not yet sliding down the scale towards cold) though he hears it won't be long until the higher elevations are covered in snow, making the mountain passes treacherous and impenetrable, and he welcomes the information (though it hardly matters, since he'll be long gone by then).

**Young**

Time passes, and in this part of the world where people last well beyond middle age-where their faces become thick and lined and their beards grow long and their eyes narrow with knowledge and experience and focus-here, for all his world-weariness, Nezumi begins to wonder whether he's ever really lived at all.

**Last**

There's a permanence here (not for him, but for the others in the camp who go home to their wives and their children and their families) and it makes Nezumi wonder, every once in a while, what it takes to really lay down roots, to really belong.

**Wrong**

Once he thought it meant open windows and an outstretched hand and a shock of white hair on the pillow next to his, walled in by rows of endless books (or maybe the smooth wooden surface of a stage, that rush of adrenaline, stepping out under those lights) but now he's not so sure.

**Gentle**

He wills his heart to harden like the callouses on his hands as he works and works, and when the work ends in one place he moves on, but sometimes, in a crowded train carriage or marketplace, or in the jostle of workers vying for positions in the fields or the factories, his memory gets the best of him, and he thinks that maybe he did have a home once, after all.

**One**

He's sure it's a place that Shion, knows too-the two things feel inextricably linked-but this doesn't change the fact that he knows in his heart that he and Shion are as different from each other as two people could ever be.

**Thousand**

He doesn't pay attention to the passage of time, doesn't want to know when it's been a hundred or two hundred or two thousand days, because that would mean thinking about how long is long enough and there's no number that corresponds to that concept - not yet, anyway.

**King**

Shion would have done anything for him, anything at all, Nezumi thinks, as he shivers under the thin blanket that's not nearly warm enough for winter in these parts, and it had been almost as terrifying as the thought of losing him.

**Learn**

Experiences, mistakes – Nezumi firmly believes in learning from both, yet all the way out here, he can't help but wonder just what else there is to learn.

**Blur**

Memories fade and shift back into focus and then fade again, and the one thing Nezumi swears he won't do is move so fast that he's no longer able to stop.

**Wait**

He's well aware that epiphanies (especially ones like this that shape absolutely everything) are not likely to come simply because he's tired of waiting, but that doesn't stop the darkness from threatening to engulf him every single time he closes his eyes; it doesn't stop anything.

**Change**

Sometimes he wonders if it's even possible, to alter so much with so few resources (and so little motivation).

**Command**

He remembers a time when he easily doled out orders—_stay quiet; stick with me; don't let me out of your sight_—and it feels like a lifetime ago that he had ever possessed so much resolve.

**Hold**

These days, it's all he can do to hold his ground over a small claim of space, a place to park his bag and pillow at the end of the day, but at least the winter has almost passed - it'll be spring soon, for whatever that's worth.

**Need**

It's a familiar feeling that creeps up when he least expects it, a tightness in his chest, a quiver in his stomach that doesn't go away no matter how full he is or how exhausted his body becomes.

**Vision**

Shion is there, but he's not - a mirage behind his eyes when he closes them, even in the middle of the day with the sun beating down on his face, beads of sweat lining his brow and trickling down the back of his shirt.

**Attention**

He realizes what he's doing, and where this path is likely leading him, after the third city in two weeks disappears behind him in a cloud of dusty boot-prints.

**Soul**

Something is pulling, tugging him along, and the closer he gets, the tighter his heart feels in his chest and the more convinced he is than ever that he's making a mistake, that it's too soon, too much, not enough.

**Picture**

Shion would love the view from here, Nezumi thinks, and he's on top of a mountain that it's taken him the better part of two days to climb; he considers only briefly the many ways his bones would break and shatter from this height on their way down.

**Fool**

The storm shows up out of nowhere and quickly turns from bad to worse - he has to duck into a small overhang of rock for safety, watching lightning strike the ground not five meters from his feet.

**Mad**

After the thunder stops pounding around him, he steps out into the steady pelting rain, his legs shaking, and just screams for as long as he can, until his throat is hoarse and he can barely breathe, until he stops picturing an open window in Chronos and until he stops hearing a now-familiar voice cutting through the wind and rain, until all he can hear is himself, and after what feels like hours the clouds part over the hills behind him, sunlight breaking through in thick swatches and he wonders if this is it, if this is his epiphany or if he's simply lost his mind.

**Child**

He feels young-he was young -but somehow he knows he's about to leave something behind, and he can only hope that it's the right thing, that he's made the right choice.

**Now**

"Now," Shion says, and Nezumi wonders if it's a question, just before opens his eyes to sunlight streaming across his face, and a bright cloudless sky above him.

**Shadow**

The morning light is brilliant and post-spring purple over the mountains as Nezumi picks his way down the trail, and above him, lingering clouds sometimes shield the sun, sometimes reveal full light that glistens on the leaves of the trees and off of the smooth wet rocks around him.

**Goodbye**

"Now," he thinks to himself and wonders why his insides feel as if they're being wrenched from his body, because for the first time in forever, he knows exactly where he's going, where he's headed.

**Hide**

Shion doesn't see him, can't, not from this vantage point, but Nezumi can see him, moving behind the curtains, back and forth - regular intervals of solid person and wraith up there in the shadows.

**Fortune**

He thinks for a brief moment that maybe he won't move, maybe it would be an okay fate to just live out the remainder of his life here, in this corner of a doorway with its darkness made just a little darker by the fact that he's in it, watching.

**Safe**

And then he's buried in Shion's arms, in the curves of his body, in his lips and he thinks he knows why he can't move now, and he doesn't care, because he doesn't want to, not anymore; not ever again.

**Ghost**

Shion wakes with a start, shivering, mumbling about dreams and reality and Nezumi finds that he has no idea what to say, no reassurances to give (just his hands, his body, his voice).

**Book**

The pages feel ancient - they practically fall apart between his fingers, but he turns them all anyway, methodically, breathing them in, remembering.

**Eye**

He tells Shion about the mountain and the storm and the bright white lightning because he asks; because he listens, Nezumi tells him about what he left up there on that mountain that night, about how he has no idea if it was his heart or his fear or something else altogether, and Shion, because he's Shion, clings to Nezumi's chest and Nezumi, because he has no idea who he is anymore, lets him.

**Never**

"This is why I don't like promises," Nezumi says, and doesn't wait for Shion's response, just keeps walking towards the open window, wanting to jump, to scream, to something.

**Sing**

"There was an old man," Nezumi starts, "at the first work camp I visited, and he had so much life in him, and then one day he just stopped, and I wanted to sing for him, but I couldn't – it was like everything had dried up in me," he says, and Shion presses his hand to Nezumi's shoulder and says, "Sing for him now, I'll listen," and so Nezumi does.

**Sudden**

Sometimes he looks at Shion and something soars in his chest, something so overwhelming it roots him right to the spot, and something in him says "this is it, isn't it", and he wants to answer, but he can't open his mouth, can't breathe.

**Stop**

"I couldn't stop," Nezumi says, "so I just kept going," and it's late, or it's early, or it's both, and they should be asleep, but Shion can't stop asking questions and Nezumi can't stop answering them.

**Time**

There's a scar on Shion's left hand, just above the mid-point of his knuckles, and it feels foreign and strange under his fingers– Nezumi knows it wasn't there before, and he can't imagine for the life of him how Shion could have acquired it.

**Wash**

Shion's hands move through Nezumi's hair and laughter stirs unexpectedly from somewhere deep in his chest - "After all these years, it still feels like you're washing one of Inukashi's dogs," he says, and Shion laughs too, and his hand twists around the strands of Nezumi's hair, lost in the foam and the bubbles.

**Torn**

"Maybe you were happier without me," Nezumi says, and Shion denies it, of course he does, but not fast enough, not tonight, anyway.

**History**

"Look at me," Shion demands, and Nezumi realizes that maybe Shion's right, because he can't, maybe he never could, maybe this city is too much, too big and too heavy to shake off, even now.

**Power**

"There's not a single thing I've done since then that wasn't for you," Shion says, matter-of-fact and calm, though his eyes are dark, "so that you would have somewhere to come back to."

**Bother**

"I know," Nezumi says, because there's nothing else to say, because he can't say that knowing this was the worst thing about being gone, and now it's the worst thing about being back.

**God**

"I believe in you, nothing else," Shion says, and Nezumi thinks it might be the most idiotic thing he's ever heard come out of Shion's mouth yet, which is really saying something.

**Wall**

And then Shion is dragging him out of the small apartment, tugging him by the arm, and at first he's just walking briskly and then he's running, over cobblestones and fresh pavement and stones until they're standing at the edge where the city meets the sprawling, old west block, and Shion grabs his shoulders and shakes him - "We took this wall down together," he says, so loudly that the tourists all whip their heads around to witness what comes next, as Nezumi pulls Shion towards him and presses their lips together desperately.

**Naked**

"Trust me," Shion says, tracing the scars on Nezumi's back like he's mapping destinations with his tongue, and when Nezumi shivers, Shion presses the palm of his hand against the curve of Nezumi's hip as if it's the most natural thing in the world.

**Drive**

And maybe it is, because the warmth that pools at the base of his spine at Shion's touch, and the swift spikes of pleasure that course through his veins every time Shion's tongue flicks over his skin, and the throbbing between his legs when he imagines Shion inside of him feels like a part of him that's finally woken up from a deep sleep, feels like eyes finally opening to a brilliant sunrise.

**Harm**

"If you want me-to stop-" Shion gasps, and moves in further, but Nezumi quiets him with a moan, because no – he wants all of this, right now, even the part that feels like he's being split in two.

**Precious**

Because somehow, Nezumi thinks, this is exactly where he's meant to be.

**Hunger**

He tugs Shion closer, deeper, and above him, Shion's eyes have gone dark and primal, and it quickens Nezumi's pulse, makes the breaths between them come a little faster as Shion starts to move and they find a rhythm, and then it quickens, and Nezumi's thighs start to quiver because Shion is heavy, dammit, but he's been trying to meet him with every thrust, and oh, _oh_-and then everything sears bright hot behind his clenched eyelids; his bones have all gone liquid, the way they just melt right away.

**Believe**

"I like myself better when I'm with you, is the thing," Nezumi says, and Shion doesn't seem confused by the non sequitur at all, just looks up at him with those ridiculous, shining eyes, and says "I know" and Nezumi can't help but kiss that smug look right off his face.

* * *

**end**


End file.
